Everybody counts
In this new era of citizen science, the public is playing a crucial role in tracking species and helping to conserve our natural heritage
In this new era of citizen science, the public is playing a crucial role in tracking species and helping to conserve our natural heritage
PLUS: Grab your smartphone, your binoculars and get out there… we show you how to get involved
“Is that a tree sparrow? Yeah, I think I’ve got a tree sparrow.” “Back up in those weeds?” “Yeah.” “There’s at least two that I can see.” “Oh, I’ve got a song sparrow.” “On the mound there?” “Yeah.” It’s January 1. Jamie, Roger and I are standing on a quiet side road a few kilometres south of Rice Lake in south-central Ontario, spending the first morning of the new decade bundled against the cold, peering through binoculars, connected to a thread that stretches back 120 years to Christmas Day of 1900.
It was on that date that a handful of birders and amateur naturalists, led by Frank Chapman, editor of Bird-lore,
a precursor to Audubon magazine, held North America’s first Christmas Bird Count. That year, 27 people in 25 locations — including Toronto and Scotch Lake, New Brunswick — counted 18,500 birds and 89 species.
The census was conceived to promote conservation, an alternative to 19th-century Christmas Day shooting parties. Held annually since, it has evolved into something its creators and early generations of participants could never have conceived: the continent’s longest-running citizen science project. In 2018–19, 80,000 observers tallied almost 49 million birds on one-day counts in 2,616 locations over a three-week period spanning Christmas and New Year’s. For ornithologists, ecologists and other scientists, the accumulated data set is, in the words of one researcher, “indispensable for understanding changes in [winter] bird populations at scales otherwise unattainable.”
Now imagine replicating that result in all areas of ecology and natural science — not merely to count species, but to spark new discoveries, detect and track environmental hazards, measure change, support policy and action, educate and engage the public, and empower individuals to use science as a tool for environmental justice. That is the story of the recent growth and future promise of citizen science in 2020, in Canada and around the world.
Use of the term “citizen science” in this context started only in the early 1990s, yet today studies, research projects and science-based initiatives that derive in whole or in part from data generated by the public are mainstream. For a time, the term carried a stigma of not being “serious” science, but according to Leslie Ries, assistant professor of biology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and a citizen science data-management specialist, that has largely passed. “Citizen science as a source of data for rigorous analysis is becoming more and more accepted,” she says.
New technologies and related trends are a huge factor, of course. Online networks, crowdsourcing, digital photography, smartphones, database software and artificial intelligence are essential parts of the citizen toolkit. But perhaps most significantly, while “citizen science” spotlights the public, the field’s current momentum is coming as much or even more so from scientists themselves. So while public interest in learning about the environment, doing one’s part for nature, and leveraging greater knowledge and involvement to have more influence on local issues and policy is key, citizen science is also now a mainstay focus of research conferences, associations and professional journals. Academics are realizing that citizen-science-based scholarship has opened the door to a new frontier of discovery.
Online networks, crowdsourcing, digital photography, smartphones, databases and AI are essential parts of the citizen scientist’s toolkit… just add the love of nature